A Shadow Minder
by a Happy Psychosis
Summary: An amiable splitting open of the mental cavities of the youngest Shadow Man - well, at least before the Elders did it in a more literal sense. Harsh. Experimental re-write in progress. I think.
1. Once upon a time, there was a light girl

**The wonderful L. J. Smith owns the Forbidden Game and all its characters. Lucky. **

**So this is my first shot at a Forbidden Game FF. I just finished the series and now I'm having**_**JxJATWFGSBMJJAIGDAMAPCTW**_**(Its an official medical problem. JulianxJenny And The Whole Forbidden Game Series But Mostly Just Julian And I Guess Dee And Michael Are Pretty Cool Too-Withdrawal. Seriously, you know you've got it too and venting through FF is the only known cure. God help us. God help us all.)**

**Sorry if they end up out of order. I'm just rambling on impulse.**

**This first one is of when Julian first saw Jenny in what I have dubbed as 'The Pennsylvanian Closet Of Doom And Grandpa Guzzling Fiasco.' Try saying that three times fast.**

…

Update 2013:** jesus christ. why.**

**: : : **

It was the basic nature of a Shadow Man to hate. Hate so burningly, so absolutely, so irrefutably that it could almost fold past the limits of even a human's comprehension. At norm, it was focused in a way that allowed equal and rather fair loathing to everything that respired and then some, regardless of aesthetic or creed or manner. It was a fact of unlife, something akin to pointing out that, if you used it properly, ice burned, or that mortal blood was such a delightful shade of red.

The Shadow Men hated. They could no more cease to do that than cease to swallow, and the youngest was no different.

But Julian had a special, _special_ shard of resentment in him for sorcerers.

The uphill drag of their carcasses as they grated against the food chain irritated him deeply, helped along by their interference in things they had no business with or understanding of. It was inherently incorrect for a human to have power, slight and damnably luck orientated as it was, over the Shadows.

He did, it must be clarified, especially despise the ones that locked him inside their closets. And with naught but his tittering elders, endless ice, infinite dark, and his own quiet and increasingly innovative imaginings of grievous bodily harm towards the one to whom he owed his predicament for company. Julian, much to the misfortune of any who would make contact with him for the foreseeable future, was eons passed the point of mere boredom (which in itself has historically been responsible for numerous inventions and outbreaks of intricate and permanently scarring psychological disorders) and well into being _profanely fucking_ _annoyed_.

Now, when fully submerged in the cloying thunder of their hate, when in this state of boiling anti-zen, it is impossible for the Shadow Men to be reached from above murk's surface.

And if not strictly impossible, then it would take an awful lot.

It would take, for example, the accursed, iced-shut, immovable closet door being blown inwards with a jolt that sent up slicing maelstroms and echoes howling for miles in every direction, high-octave swine squeals of the elders sent to drill his ears and icicles to lash at his eyes. It would even take Julian, snarling like a feral dog spooked, staring against the freeze, ready to lunge, rip, tear, make something _scream–_

–only to be blinded –_ blinded_ – by a flare of pure solar light. Like ten thousand camera flashes stilled at their brightest peak and glaring from the threshold, silhouetted only by a figure haloed and turned golden – no, no, _She_ was golden, all of Her own – within the bright.

Yes.

That would just about do it.

She was – entirely seraphic, _éclatant, kanpekina,_ _álainn_ – this world, for all its strange and abundant beauties, had yet to concoct a word that he would fit to this creature, with Her painful shine and Her gilded hair that even now danced excitedly about Her head, like new ribbons twining lovingly on a maypole and flickering into those _eyes _– and, by the Nine, what eyes they were, even slit to avoid the onslaught of ice wind, they entrapped Julian under deep and unnameable green of faraway uncharted waters, the shifting viridian of the secret under-plume feathers on a bird of paradise's wing. She was vibrating with so much colour he didn't understand how She could possibly stand to keep Herself ravelled up, hadn't let free and painted the world Her way, for surely She could fill any one of them.

She was so _alive_.

Julian was captivated, right there. Mind and soul.

He stood cold and still and indistinguishable from the ice if not for the _wanting_.

Needing.

Yes. Yes, he _needed_ this One. This one girl. This-

"_Jenny!"_

Julian felt his face twitch, diffidently, in the _oddest_ way. It was a few stalled moments before he recognised the tightness in his cheeks as the beginnings of a _smile_. It was the first of its like in a long, long time, and it went unseen in the darkness of the prison. _Jenny._ Jenny, Jenny.

To Julian the seconds were stalled as if trapped in a clear bubble of amber. He felt, in that half-place, that he could spend an eternity on this threshold if he was allowed only to watch, to catch the glow of Her.

He was not given the chance.

Ignorant and buzzing, the Shadows around him stirred forth like a roiling swarm of flies compressed into vague shapes on all sides. Julian's idiotic expression was lost and replaced with the more familiar, if anomalously sincere, primordial twist of a snarl. A silver-tipped arrow through a vermin nest, Julian darted forth. As he does so, he is full of rightness. This is what he should be doing. This is his meant direction – to Her, to Jenny. He wanted – nearness, he wanted-

_Oh_, he wanted.

Suddenly the rectangle of light was marred by a tattered arm. A hated, _hated_ arm, and one that thought itself worthy of coiling, like a half-shed snake, around the girl's slip of a waist. When it hauled her away from his direct sight, Julian heard himself hiss-growl from all the pressured places in his throat. No sooner than he'd registered the fact that he now in fact _had_ a throat, complete with the rest of an unnoticeably constructed human form, had he jackknifed desperately forward and lodged a human foot in the doorway. The slam of the oak against the new leg went unfelt, and the frantic shrieks of, "_Nauthiz!"_ were only a minor headache to him.

He could not see Her. And he was going to see this screaming obstruction _burn_ for that.

With the combined shove of all the Shadow Men – something that made even Julian and the others at the spear point of the mass feel distinctly crushed – against this one frail sorcerer… there was no hope in any of the Hells for him. Steadily, the door was opening. Tendrils of cloying mist slithered and twined through the cracks, pressing like insistent fingers or venturing through the room like the antenna of some blind and terrible insect. Where the wisps touched, frost spread over objects – amusing little talismans of charm and protection that could do no more against this sickness than a kiss could to a guillotine – and rippled out as whitened mould.

Over the soft crackles of furniture petrifying under the freeze, the excited chittering of a legion of recently liberated Shadow Men all spittling to speak at once swallowed the small room (to someone who has quite assuredly never had the misfortune to hear first-hand what excitement sounds like in the Shadow Men, it would be beneficial, for wont of a better word, to try and visualise the clicks and squeals of a starving plague of locusts as they converge upon a single patch of corn, which means the sound, also, of thousands of small exoskeletons ripping and falling as they tear their hivemates apart to gorge first. And then picture yourself as that patch of corn. With this, perhaps the most imaginative and entomophobic could catch an inkling of the noise in that room). To Julian they, and the frantically screeching old human, were reduced to a mildly invasive hum at his peripherals. The little light girl had his absolute and whole attention.

_Jenny. _

Tears were freezing in those eyes, those eyes like the last wink of dusklight caught in abandoned green bottles, and shudders wracked her tiny willow-wand of a frame with, surely, enough force to break it. She did not look away from the howling depths of his world.

Captivated. There was the word. A moth captured in the pretty prison of a lantern and looking only at the flame.

It was only, _could_ only be, the chafe-your-marrow echo of the Shadows speaking all at once in an abhorrent, cavernous singularity that gave anything that they could possibly say a distinct undercurrent of, '**BASICALLY, YOU ARE DOOMED**,' that roused Julian a ways out of his stilled stupor.

_"Give her to us."_

And Julian, for the first time, began to feel the cold.

"I can't!" There is no way to describe the level of pathetic achieved by the fraying tone of the old human in the face of Them. The absolute futility of him.

"_Then we'll__take__her_."

"_We'll embrace her_."

"No." Julian's voice was clear, especially compared to the sorcerer's whines and Dəhşət's malice and Yжас's ravenous hisses. He didn't recognise it. "Let's keep her," he said. "I want her."

_"We all __**want **__her_." A faceless (literally, without face) elder – Hrůza – turned his leathery, sharpened skulls to Julian. The one closest to him loosed a probing length of grey flesh that may once have been a tongue. "_We're all__**hungry**_."

"_No_." The sorcerer, this time. Not Julian. That was incorrect.

Kinh Dị's voice lapped with all the reason in the world. _"There's only one way to change the consequences. Make a new bargain."_

The coward back-stepped, milky eyes went glassy and filmed. "You mean…"

_Oh_, and Julian was smirking, finally, and almost himself again. _Oh, yes. Oh, we mean._

"_A life for a life_."

"_Someone must take her place_."

"_Come now, that's only fair_." That terrible reason in their blackened tones. That inescapable way. Who could bear that? Not the human.

Not Julian, anymore.

"I _want_ her."

"_Ah, youth."_ Skräck's voice was slow and stupid. They laughed like ancient instruments played by new age novices, and Julian knew he had them.

He had Her.

The old human braced. "I'm ready."

_You're really, really not_.

"_No!"_

Her voice. Like a glittering stone whistling through the air and shattering the cold glass of the world at impact. Like _living_.

Julian saw the bright girl leap back in sight, a miniature golden kitten pawing at the old dog's tail before it went away to die, her tiny, tiny legs scrabbling to get to her grandfather. Her little lily-pad hand grasped helplessly at his sleeve– just as the Shadow Men hooked their talons through tough cloth and warm tissue and _hauled_.

And stalled. And wound him further, by inches, and he was a fox in a fox-trap terrified and clawing with frantic fear and they could have won the battle easily, he knew, but they were feeling_ playful_ after their keep. And they would drag them both in to join their Games.

_No_.

It was internal, now. And it moved him.

Julian clamped a hand over Jenny's grandfather's pressure point and pressed hard, hissed into the old mans ear, "Release her, you stupid fool. _Let go of Jenny_."

The sorcerer didn't even look at him, didn't break his keening. What he did was fling out wild arm which slapped away the desperate hands and caused a little cry like a fallen songbird. As with any feral beast pack, the sudden movement caused a jerk of violent energy within the Shadows and, with high giggles and unmistakable _ripping_, the sorcerer was gone. Julian did not follow him.

Instead he slipped out of the cold and melted into silence and shades in that little Pennsylvanian basement, and Julian watched. He watched, quiet as snow, this little light girl – this _Jenny_, as her tears, holding her feathered lashes like pre-dawn spring dew, played the watery light through the slit blinds as though they were each a perfect liquid crystal, watched as She tipped forward like a lovely china marionette, made for dancing but the strings all cut away, her head in her hands and the sheet of gold hair coming down like a veil.

And there was no one to notice a droplet catch and freeze in the Sunday morning air, momentarily a miniature pendant of opal before it softened into a languid trickle over the curve of a phantom hand.

Julian decided he would stay a while.

**: : :**

_In plays and poems someone understands,_

_there's something makes us more than blood and bone,  
and more than biological demands  
for me, love's like the wind, unseen, unknown.  
i see the trees are bending where it's been,  
i know that it leaves wreckage where it's blown.  
i really don't know what, "i love you," means.  
i think it means, "Don't leave me here alone."_

**-Neil Gaiman, Sonnet**

**: : :**

**i love that poem isn't it pretty. here i shall recommend Neil Gaiman in general. yes. **

**oh and now jsky the Shadow Men's names are all translations for the word 'Horror' instead of just syllables i thought sounded menacing ok the more you know**

**this is kind of satisfying even if basically nobody else gives much of a fuck. idec anymore **

**i just want to know your feelings. about Julian's feelings **

**because shhhh he has them and stuff**

-Feb. 2013


	2. and a cold shadow boy who loved her

**This one is of when Julian was waiting for Jenny in the More Games shop.**

…

Update 2013:** good set-up. at least now i know i have always been a stellar conversationalist. so **_**fetch**_**. **

**: : :**

"_Welcome, beauty. banish fear  
you are queen and mistress here__  
__speak your wishes, speak your will__  
__swift obedience meet them still."_

**- Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont (****Beauty and the Beast****)**

**: : :**

_Patta-pat. Patta-pat. patta-patpatta-patpatta-patpattapatpat-_

Spasming, the pale hand smacked against the countertop as though it were disobedient pet. Stiff and still below him, Julian glared icily down at his trite fist as if daring it to oppose him for the twelfth time in as many minutes. Obviously it wasn't of his _own_ volition, to ever be caught in so pointless and _humanly inane_ an act as this – finger-drumming. If the perpetrator was not attached to his person the incessant digits would have been removed. But attached to him they were, and it was perhaps this fact alone that prevented their ability to be described as in any way 'nervous.'

Tch.

More air than human, Julian slipped from his perch. Instead of chancing a look at the neon eccentricity that was the store's clock, he watched the faint wisps of dust curl up from under his thick boots and rise idly upward, glittering in quiet defiance of physics to settle upon the ceiling where it set to shifting as smoky silt above the strobe lights. Even while absolutely ignoring the stupid human invention, he couldn't begin to shut out the constant, mocking chip of the _tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, itisn'ttime, tock, haha, tock, ticking_.

He'd barely felt his annoyance spike before the room was flooded with brutal acid house blaring.

_Ahh._

It was not at all funny, the Shadow Man reflected as he set once more about adjusting his game boards to very precise angles of disorder, that eternities could pass him by in what felt like a hummingbird's wingbeat – and here he thought wistfully of the 13th century, the most part of which he had spent sleeping worlds for himself in a Persian palace catacomb and only gotten up to mentally annihilate the occasional ambitious lordling that hoped to win boon from the djinn cursing the royal treasury. That _had_ been a quaint break – and then…

And then there was this One Day.

Because it was _the_ Day.

Today.

The day he was finally,_ finally_, after all those days and hours and breaths and almost-touches, going to claim her. Her. Locks like sunshine on new gold and eyes of evergreen forests. Beached smooth skin over that white-hot ember glow and a spirit like the Summer. Jenny.

Images of her trickled into his thoughts wholly, as was her way, without his consent. They flitted through his head as a sort of slideshow at a speed anyone else would merely see as a full motion picture of a girl's life – but Julian gave every candid scene the attention of which it was deserving, every prism facet of colour his pouring attention, and all other distractions (and wasn't everything, in the face of his Jenny?) were scattered away like pests before a torch flare. He could almost feel it, as he always had, the way his own mind, cold and sharp and pitch as it was, warmed as the precious pictures brushed at the hard spines and melted them softer. On any other day, this could have tempted a little smile.

Julian checked a hateful, furtive glance at the time.

Aaaannnyy second now.

A sharp clatter to his left made Julian jolt, but when the following growl rumbling from all the dark places at once was met with a hiss that gave the impression of a rushing gas pipe in an explosives factory, it shifted to an irked scowl. Eyes flicking to the source of the commotion, Julian shook his head almost wearily before issuing a sharp whistle though his teeth. Lurker paused bashfully mid-snarl like a cut engine, dropping the tail of the Creeper from her jaws while the snake himself unwound his coiled length of muscle from the wolf and slithered, sulkily, to what could be misconstrued as a safe distance.

Julian examined the mess. Miniature gemstone game pieces lay scattered on the floor like fallen soldiers, the labyrinthine details crafted by a loving and long-dead master of the old art irretrievably lost to tooth marks and cracks. A thick sheet of 24 karat dark gold lay tiredly in the plaster dust, gouges and dents forever obscuring the intricacies of the hieroglyph guides drawn into it. The set was a survivor attesting to a thousand years of play, and simultaneously just two owners past new (one of which was a long forgotten pharaoh, and the other, of course, was Julian). A legacy which had, unfortunately, ultimately lead to a half hour with his pets, drawn inextricably as they were to destroying the most expensive things in whichever vicinity they so happened to find themselves. He'd taught them well.

Despite this, he looked back to the Creeper and the Lurker with a gaze he knew promised creative punishment. In unison, they shot each other blameful glares before averting their unnaturally intelligent eyes to the floor. The wolf's ears were flat against her shaggy head and the snake was lying ruler-straight on the floor and rather wishing he could flatten to paper.

"Get out of my _sight_," hissed Julian in a convincing show of grit-teeth rage that his long-time companions saw through, but wisely humoured anyway, dissipating into chastened shadows almost before the words were finished. Maybe they'd gone off to break something else priceless and precious. Like a small child. Or whatever.

Julian didn't care. Julian was looking once more at a clock, and he was starting to grin.

_Showtime_.

With an absent finger-snap the ruined game board clicked out of existence and into some far off universal deadspace, a faint pop of air hastening to fill the emptiness its last mark on the Earth before its existence was forgotten at last.

Moments later the handle on the shop's paint chipped door jerked down and swung in, silent in a way deeply at odds with the rusted hinges. A creature of habit, Julian swiftly found himself coiled in the darkest corners of the room. He barely felt his meticulously prepared body dissolve itself, though it was usually a good feeling – much like a too-tight bandage being released. His form settled in time to see Jenny stumble in almost gracelessly, her familiar heartbeat irregular and her chest heaving in a way that disquieted him. He resolved to root out the reason later, and preferably make it cry.

For now, looking at her, Julian had the notion that she was in exactness an angel that had – well, not precisely _fallen_, so much as wander vaguely downwards and come flitting into his little corner of Hell. Julian watched his seraph as she spun, casting good light over that which had just been in the business of dullness and dark. Even the dust motes in the air seemed to be reacting to it, curling in the air around her like an excitable kaleidoscope vying for a sliver of her attention as she looked about at the strangeness all around.

Julian felt his ever-unprepared chest oriented stall that came every time he saw her, chased by the twisted pleasure-pain of being so close – _so__close_ –and still, still unable to reach out. To touch.

Sudden giddiness. Heady and bubbling, it would have knocked him down, had he legs at the time.

Because _he could_ _do it_.

Today. Today was the Day.

Swallowing an unidentifiable vibration of feeling, Julian stepped out of the shade and into his electrified bones.

Slowly, slowly, a breath for each step, Julian closed the distance between himself and Jenny. He moved until he was standing so close that he could blow in her ear and send the threads of sun dancing, could smell the jasmine of her shampoo and the honey of her. A few silky strands almost brushed his face, making his eyelids flicker, when she tilted her head. Julian followed her look, chin almost on her shoulder, and he quirked his lips and closed his eyes and breathed her.

_And shall we begin, my dear?_

Crafting one of the many smirks that came so easily to this face, and in_ three, two,__** now**_-

"Can I help you?" _Nailed it._

Hair flying like a sheet, Jenny whirled. Her rose petal lips opened soundlessly but for the slight part of flesh from flesh that sent a shiver down his spine. Her green eyes met his with a force that crushed away his breath and left him utterly stilled. Far from the sweeping entrances and shared witticisms Julian had imagined extensively through the years leading up to this Day, he found himself reasonless and – lost to her.

He thought he'd known what to expect, would have been some semblance of used to her by now, but – the way she was _looking at him_.

By the Nine, but She was looking at _him_.

And he could not give thie game away, he thought, and gave himself a mental shake (and, when that didn't work, gave the mental equivalent of dropping a rather enraged anvil atop himself), not before the Games had even begun.

Julian turned away and closed his eyes hard, seeking his professionalism behind the lids. One last deep breath lost under the music, Julian flipped it off the accursed noise manually. While had been half-decent for distraction, now he couldn't afford anything of the like. This was important – this was Jenny. Here.

As in, actually.

As i- _Oh – fuck, oh fuck ohfuckfuckingcalmfu_–

While a considerable segment of him was having what may have been what the humans called a panic attack, the rest of Julian leaned against the nearest supportive surface. He aimed for nonchalant, so that is damn well what he got, thank you. "Can I help you?" he repeated.

_Come and play with me, Jenny, _another branch of him was humming, soothing. _Come play_.

Jenny blinked a few times before lowering her gaze. Ashamed? Off-put? On more familiar ground now, Julian's curiosity won over and a quick glance into her mind showed him her motive. It made his lips skim back from his teeth, but _this_ was damnably common grounds, too.

'–_think i'd never seen a guy before god on tom's birthday too–'_

_Tom_.

Useless, idiotic, undeserving little _Tommy_ with his insipid little swine eyes and his generic little life slugging on ahead. He also, by some ungodly backhand of a fluke, happened to be Jenny's boyfriend. Soon, very soon, to be _ex._ The Shadow Man had the calming little mental picture of the boy's prone body indeed with cartoonish Xs sliced across his eye sockets, and it was this that cooled his mask back to its place in time for Jenny's risen head. Her eyes were opaque dyed glass and her jaw was set.

His defiant Jenny, she was. When she spoke, her voice held the steadiest note of a wind chime. "I want to buy a game," Julian quietly catalogued as First Words Spoken to Him. "For a party – for my boyfriend."

_Of course you do,_ thought Julian, affectionate, _Who do you think whispered the idea to you in the first place?_ He liked to think he did a very good job of not reacting. "Be my guest," he said smoothly, straightening. "Anything in particular?"

"Well…"

"How about Senet, the Egyptian game of the dead?" It helped to talk directly to her, he was finding, or he'd forget himself and start to stare again. Creature of habit. "Or the I-ching? Or maybe you'd like to cast the runes?" He picked up the deceptively modest looking leather cup from one of the shelves, shaking it. It contained carved human knuckle bones, but she didn't need to know that.

"No," said Jenny, just _adorably_ uncomfortable. "Nothing like that."

"Well, there's always the ancient Tibetan game of goats and tigers." He held out an arm to the block of bronze sheen of the set, and wished for someone to appreciate his giddy irony. "The fierce tigers, see, stalk the innocent little goats, and the innocent little goats try to run from the tigers. For two players."

Was he pushing it? He didn't care.

_Hello, Jenny_.

"I– no," she deadpanned, indeed suspicious. Clever, clever Jenny. "I was just looking for- just a game that a lot of people can play at once. Like Pictionary or Outburst." (How he managed not to roll his eyes was a mystery, although it made him queerly close to piteous for her. _My poor girl,_ he thought. _Doesn't know how to play any real Games. I'll teach you, lovely darling, just you wait_.) "But since you don't seem to have anything like that in store-"

"I see. That kind of game."

With a suddenness that opened a predatory place in his mind, Jenny turned for the door with an abrupt, "Thank you."

Time to set the trap.

"Mystery." She stopped. "Danger." He made his voice low, made it only truly fit for sharing secrets under the shield home bedsheets. "Seduction. Fear. Secrets reviled. Desired unveiled." He rolled the last word around his tongue before releasing it: "Temptation."

Jenny was tensing. "What are you talking about?"

"The game, of course," he replied, adding a perfectly placed blink of the innocent. "That's what you want, isn't it? Something…" He sieved the words from one of the thoughts she'd had earlier that same day, accidentally. "Very special."

"I think that I'd better-"

"We do have something like that in stock." _At your convenience and most _fated_ coincidence, mademoiselle_.

Julian was there and back swiftly, perfectly aware that her expression was close kin to the one worn directly before an artful escape from one of the many worthless boys that breathed her air too closely and, another happy coincidence, tented to end the night bloodied red or screaming blue or more often than not, Julian could cheerfully report, both. His return was largely a swagger. "I think that this is what you've been looking for?"

She gave the plain looking box a once over, looked back at him, and was generally incredulous. "You've got to be joking."

Wordless, Julian held the box. Partly because nothing more needed to be said on his part, and partly because he was, again, lost to the novelty of watching this angle of her. Alert and close. Aware.

"Could I see it?"

Regrettably, those green eyes were clouding slightly as a side-effect. "Well… I don't know. " Still, she was stronger than this illusion – but Julian hadn't been called a master of strings for no reason. "On second thought, I'm not sure I can sell it to you after all."

"Why _not?_"

_Got you._

"Because it really is special. Un-mundane." -_unlike your boyfriend_- "I can't let it go to just anybody, or for just any reason. Maybe if you explained what it was for…"

He knew, of course. But he'd also been doing all the talking. He wanted her to talk now. He wanted to hear more, always more, of that clear charmed voice he could listen to – and _would_ listen to, if this played out as it ought – forever.

"It's for a party tonight," she said, "for my boyfriend, Tom. He's seventeen today. Tomorrow night we'll have the big party- you know, with _everybody_ invited. But tonight it's just our group. Our crowd."

Unhappy words, to him, but Julian loved this. How long had he wanted it, this attention? How long had he wished for her to spin words meant for him, and him alone, to hear?

Too long.

Julian felt his head loll blissfully to one side, still _so pleased_ when her eyes noticed his movement, but displeased that she'd stopped her talk. He pressed on with forced casualness. "So?"

"So I need something for us to do," she went on, mercifully. Nine, he was a lost cause. "You can't just get seven people in a room, throw Doritos at them, and expect them to have a good time. I've screwed up massively by not getting organized until now- no food, no decorations. And Tom-" Ah. Even _her_ voice couldn't make that name pleasant.

"And Tom," he put conscious effort into not spitting, "will care?" Petty, ungrateful bastard that he was, he just might. How absurd.

"I don't know- he might be disappointed. He _deserves_ better, you see."-Julian only bit back the incredulous growl when it hit his teeth-"He's– He's– well, he's incredibly handsome, and by the end of this year he'll have lettered in three sports-"

"I get it," he managed.

"No, you don't." _No. I really don't._ "He's not like that at all. Tom is _wonderful_. He's just _so_ wonderful that sometimes it takes a little keeping up with him. And we've been together forever-" _I know._ "-and I love him-" _Don't._ "-and I have since second grade. Okay?" She stepped forwards, towards a Shadow Man wound up and close to screaming with black envy and ready to break and cross a lot of yellow tape lines. _Stop. It. _"He is absolutely the best boyfriend in the world, and anybody who says he isn't-"

How he could have _snapped_. He could have- could have–

What? He couldn't have _hurt_ her, or even frightened her, not really. And there were his reflexes vetoed_. What_ could he have done?

And he knew.

He was a syllable away from hitching her to a wall, pressing in, and kissing her very, very hard.

Instead, Julian held out the box and said, stupidly, desperately, detachedly, "You can hold it if you want."

"Okay." Jenny reached for it, and the moment her fingers came in contact, the moment her forest green eyes widened slightly, Julian, eyes closed when she wasn't watching, could have sworn he did hear something snap after all. It was the closing of a trap.

Jenny was tracing unknowable patterns over the dully gleaming box in his hands. His eyes were still shut, but Julian could feel the fine motions almost well enough to picture those curious, smooth fingers curling over _his_ skin– eyes opened. She had to go.

Now. Or he may not let her.

"We're closing. You gonna buy it?"

After a moment of deliberation, she raised those eyes again. "How much?"

He moved to the cash register, realised he'd forgotten to put it there and had to materialise one mid-step. He breathed a random number and sought distance, distance, distance.

Jenny handed over the money quickly and Julian almost snatched it, avoiding contact, pushing it among a few stray farthings without considering to check it the amount.

He looked up at her, and, gods help him, this was still a thrill, to find her returning it. He looked down. "Enjoy," he said.

_I know I'm going to_.

But that would be later. He had last minute things to plan, a chaotic mind to settle, and, hopefully, enough of her to keep him sated until then.

_You should check your watch,_ he thought, and pushed it towards her.

Jenny sucked in a breath. "Thank you; I have to go. Uh – see you later."

And she left.

With her back turned, Julian felt a coil unwind in him that had been tightening torturously, though to what ends he couldn't say, for every moment her eyes had been looking at and through him at the same time (rather than the alternative which was, of course, merely the through). His eyes nearly rolled back into his head as his face relaxed back into itself, and a reply that wasn't meant to be heard hitched on his sigh: "_At nine."_

To his surprise, Jenny glanced back – Julian hastened to smother his hunger under his layers of indifference as he had been for the last few minutes (had it only been minutes? Could he possibly be that unfamiliar to her?). From the looks of her, he was wholly unsuccessful, and couldn't bring himself to care overmuch. Severing contact before it could begin, he reached out a too-quick hand to flip the blasting techno briefly back to its status of eardrum-bursting novocaine.

He didn't hear the door click after her. But he felt Jenny's spike of fear like a sickly shock, and was oil-slick spilled into the street's shadow in a fractured heartbeat after it.

Jenny was grasping at a door knob that had never really existed. Two human males were advancing on her.

_Oh,_ Julian thought, uninterested and murderously livid as only a Shadow Man can be, _is that all._

With practiced ease, he slipped into the dimlit little minds like a scaling insect and triggered some neurotransmitters into highly respectable frenzies of suffocating terror. The one on the left had a crippling fear of drowning, the other, spiders.

Oh, if shadows could smile.

In microseconds, the wall was a roaring pressurised tsunami and heaving mound of scuttling black legs and mandibles, respectively, with the long-lasting fright of the experience all compressed into one neat little click of a synapse.

They ran.

A few quiet beats later, a somewhat dazed Jenny left for home, and the shadows followed.

It was a beautiful Day.

**: : : **

**because i just realised that Julian is the Number One Fanboy in the history of ever.**

**like actually that's it. that's the book. **

**-**Feb. 2013


	3. like quicksilver and mercury on gold

**redrose102, schpeetris, tsukimoon101, Adrian Amory, Crimson Solitude Of The Moon, ****maggie230173****, marcie, happilyeverhaunted, BookLover223, Carey Jok, Child Of The Ashes and Alamaria ****I LOVE you for reviewing! I got some really brilliant ones, really, guys, THANKS!**

**I really wish more people would read the FG series, don't you? So here, my dear minions, is your mission. SPREAD THE WORD! Get your friends to read the book! Its awesomeness must be shared! I send cyber Julian's to anyone who does, and a cyber Julian will HUG you if you review! Pleeeeeeease? I LIVE for those things! Its actually quite sad… Oh well! **

**Bit of a jump now, this is when Julian poses as the Erlking and tricks Jenny with the rose…**

**Silver On Gold**

Julian swept regally through the underground tunnels, silk tunic and white leather leggings fitted to him perfectly, showing off his lithe physique. He looked every inch the Dark Elf King.

Groups of the disfigured creatures that roamed these tunnels bowed low and shrank back as he passed. They were nothing but lifeless projections from the copper haired girl's nightmares, of course, but Julian felt it was nice to be appreciated.

Up ahead, Julian could see the silver pool of moonlight that shone from the open ceiling cavern. Almost against his will, he quickened his pace. He had guests, after all. An anticipating, predators grin graced his lips, and was still there when he entered the cavern.

Jenny was the first to notice him. She spun, golden locks splaying out, green eyes flashing first in startled recognition then steeled contempt. Julian couldn't stop himself from admiring the way the silver rays of light hit her form, creating a halo of what looked like sunlight and moonlight woven together dancing around her. Her wind chime voice was level when she addressed him. "Julian."

Suppressing the natural shiver that tingled through him at the sound of his name on her lips, Julian spoke with flourish "Welcome to the Erlking's castle."

Jenny was scrutinizing his outfit, and Julian took immense pleasure in the fact that her eyes lingered a little longer than socially acceptable.

Eventually she spoke. "The Erlking, huh? Enjoying the part?"

"Immensely."

She snorted delicately. "At least you're _talking_ to me in this night mare. Not like the UFO one, I mean."

"Jenny." How he _loved_ to speak that name. "I will happily talk to you all night."

"Thank you, but there's a time limit, and I'd rather have my friends back."

"Say the word."

She reeled slightly, shocked, before she caught his meaning. "No, I'll do it the hard way." As always. But he must admit he really was having fun. She continued "We're going to get through all the nightmares, you know. We're going to win the game."

Her confidence was just one of the many, many things he admired about her. He told her so.

"You can admire my success – starting now. I've solved the riddle, and you're a male chauvinist pig. It is _not_ given with pleasure when taken by force."

Julian blinked in mock innocence. "What isn't?"

"A kiss. That's the answer, isn't it? And you told me if I solved the riddle, you'd let one of my friends go."

Clever girl. But still wrong. Julian smirked Devious Smile #6 and said "Wrong. I told you if you _gave me_ the answer, I'd let one of your friends go. But you haven't _given_ it to me yet." Unable to stop them, Julian's eyes rested on her peach velvet lips. "Would you like to now?"

He was ripped from her spell when she yelled "You-!" and wheeled away from him. Julian could not tolerate not seeing her lovely face, nor could he tolerate Jenny upset. A foreign emotion swept over Julian, and it actually took him a moment to place it. Guilt. Repentance. "I've upset you. You're offended." Jenny's sudden movement had made her hair sway slightly, and the ever present light danced on the blonde silk, making it shimmer, and Julian was once more captivated.

Inspiration struck. Julian immediately tapped into the sliver moonlight rays, coaxing them into the form he wanted, weaving them nimbly until they were solid. As an afterthought, Julian sent some of his own shadows to meld in with its almost complete form. He chastised himself for not thinking of some thing so damn _simple_ before. He fine tuned the finishing touches and a perfect silver rose lay in his hand. In the dim cavern it seemed almost luminous, betraying nothing of the sneak purpose it held. It had taken him mere moments to create. "Here, I'll give you something to make it up to you."

Jenny turned and reached for the blossom, spellbound. She examined it with an awed expression, and Julian wondered if that was akin to what his face looked like when he saw Jenny.

Before she could ask uncomfortable questions, Julian, easy as breathing, plucked a lie out of thin air. "Made from silver dug out by black elves in the deepest mines of the earth."

Jenny shook her head slightly. "But that's all _folklore_. Are you saying you're _really_ the Erlking? Do you want me to believe in Hansel and Gretel. too?"

"I've been more things than you can imagine." He said truthfully. "And what I want you to believe is that children can go into dark places and disappear. After which people might tell stories to explain it- sometimes true stories, sometimes not."

Julian knew his vagueness had unnerved her when she jumped to a subject change. "Anyway- it's a beautiful rose." She brushed the cool petals over her satin cheek, and Julian couldn't suppress the triumphant grin. _Perfect_.

But wanted needed privacy with his Jenny. "Lets go walking in the courtyard, you can really see the moonlight there."

To his ecstatic surprise, Jenny obliged without fuss. A thought flitted through his mind. Jenny wouldn't agree to being moderately alone with him unless she had a small inkling of trust he wouldn't hurt her. Suddenly, Julian was amazed to find that he actually liked the idea of her trusting him, and wanted to reinforce it. "Have you ever wondered," He began "why you can go into dangerous places without getting hurt? Why the stray animals you pick up never bite you, why you don't get mugged - or worse – when you wander around the bad parts of town at night?"

Jenny was visibly taken aback by his seemingly random questioning. "I… No. No, I haven't."

He looked directly into those emerald eyes, trying to convey his honesty. "I've been looking after you, Jenny. Watching over you. No one can touch you." He told her, before tacking on softly "No one but me."

Jenny replied in a whisper. "That's impossible. You… I've done those things all my life…"

"And I couldn't have been watching you that long?" He contradicted her. "But I have. I've always loved you, Jenny."

Julian didn't need to read her mind to see her internal battle with the confusion she was feeling. He assumed she wanted space between them when she turned on her heel and headed away from him.

He called after her gently. "I've never been in love before. You're my first – and you'll be my only." Good God, he hoped so. Julian hated these feeling, Julian hated _feeling _full stop, but here he was, completely, entirely, impossibly, irrevocably head over heels in love. For the first time in his life, Julian felt powerless, unable to escape (but, he knew, if he was being honest with himself, he didn't really want to).

Julian found that his feet had carried him silently closer to Jenny without his consent. When she turned to face him, Julian tested to see if his theory had been successful. He touched her face.

Julian openly marvelled at how soft the sun kissed skin felt. It felt warm and inviting under his icy fingertips. As he gently caressed the bare cheek thousands of sparks seemed to jolt up his arm and fizz through him, warming as they went. His other hand reached down almost hesitantly to take her hand. More electricity flowed through him. Her hand was warm, delicate fingered and soft. And it fit his own perfectly.

Jenny looked down at their joined hands, appearing slightly dazed. Julian traced small circled on her palm and she looked back up, forest green eyes heavy lidded. She leaned partly into his open hand, whispering a feeble "Don't."

Julian didn't want the moment to end, but his almost euphoric peace was short lived as Jenny's eyes seemed to snap back to alertness and she stepped back. "You… tricked me."

Though jenny had pulled her face away, Julian kept her hand firmly in his. "Does it matter?"

"Yes it _matters_." She tried to wrench her hand free, but Julian held it in a painless, yet unbreakable grasp, trying to get the feel of her porcelain skin against his permanently embedded into his mind. "I understand now-" She said vehemently "I'll never touch you or anything you give me. That trick won't work again." She promised.

Julian placed a grinning mask onto his face while he wrestled with the real turmoil of emotion he was feeling. "Maybe not – but another one will. Believe me Jenny: I'm going to make you mine – entirely – before you finish the Game." He made a promise of his own.

"In your dreams!" She spat.

"No, in yours. And remember, you're not alone here." Julian was regaining control of himself, cold determination seeping in. He reprimanded himself for appearing weak and lovesick in front of Jenny. _One way to remedy that_… he sent a telepathic command to his dark elf puppets, and they started towards Deirdre and Audrey. Playing right into his hands, the read head screamed.

Jenny's head whipped to its source. "That's Audrey, that's Audrey! Something's happening to her!" Jenny gave a rough jerk and Julian regretfully let her hand free. When Jenny looked back to Julian, harsh realization dawned on her features. "You know," She whispered. "You're _doing_ it - to get back at me."

"I warned you." Julian whipped new demons from Audrey's deepest fears and placed them in front of her. The scream reached a satisfying new octave. "Do you want it to stop?"

She sent him a glare so cold it almost rivalled one of his own. When she spoke, her voice was barely disguising her fury. "I'll make it stop myself, I told you I was going to win this Game. And I am. I will never give into you." She threw the rose at his feet and sprinted towards the humans.

_We'll see about that._

Julian let his creations do the work for him as he knelt to pick up the discarded silver flower. He touched one of the petals lightly. It was soft as satin, but to him it felt inferior and rough after touching Jenny's perfect skin. Julian twirled it in nimble fingers as the screams and shouts continued. He had no need for the rose.

So, Julian threw the plant up inhumanly high in the air, releasing the meagre magik it took to hold it together, and watched at it dissipated once more into silver moonlight, whisking away on an invisible breeze. As the glowing silver beams scattered and their unearthly glow faded, Julian couldn't help but compare its imperfect luminosity with the almost blinding golden light that was Jenny. Which reminded him…

Julian himself dissipated, but not into _any _kind of pretty light. Into darkness and shadows.

He had places to be, people to torment.

**Thoughts? Requests? Ramblings? REVIEWS!**

**I love those things, (and so BTW does Julian… *hint hint*) I'm sorry it was so short. Was he too soft in THAT one?** **Seriously guys you need to tell me when I screw up.** **Just go:**

**Emily,**

**You fucked up. What the hell possessed you to write Julian like that? Are you just being cruel, screwing up the series for us 'sane' people? You're a sick, SICK little girl.**

**Seriously, though. Get help.**

**That is all.**

**~Random Reviewer Person**

**If he WAS too mushy for you, I think the next chapter will make up for it, its was a request but I could KICK myself for not thinking of it! In fact *SMACK!* Oomf!…oh, **_**OW!**_** Anyway, before my concussion gets the better of me, Child Of The Ashes, I think you know what's coming… (;**


	4. but they had their rats and snags

**I know, I know, I suck. Go on, purge, let it out, let the profanity spew…**

**Done? Okay, I'm so sorry 'bout the wait, my loyal minions. My computer screwed up and took my files down with it so even after it was fixed (which took F O R E V E R) I had to rewrite all my stuff. Which sucked. *sigh* WHY am I still rambling on! You've waited long enough so here-**

"_**Hello, author."**_

"**J-J-J-JUILAIN!"**

"_**The one and only."**_

"**What are you doing here? Not, you know, not that I object."**

"_**Stick to your own species. It's your goddamn fault, author. Do you KNOW how many of my pissed off fan-girls have been sulking around because of your atrocious updating? Or lack thereof. DO YOU?"**_

"**Uh…"**

"_**Uh? Oh, that's very literate of you. How in Hades did you manage to get so many reviews? Humans are such strange little creatures."**_

"**Why, thank you."**

"_**Tell you what, here's a riddle fore you. 'Two bodies have I, though both joined in one, the stiller I stand, the faster I run. What be I'?"**_

"***mumbles*"**

"_**What was that?"**_

"**Sigh. AN HOUR GLASS! And I KNOW what you're gonna say! My time for this story ran out ages ago and everyone's probably given up by now."**

"_**Mm. So she's not actually as dumb as she looks. And, though I could have said it better myself, that's basically it, yes." **_

"**Oi, watch it Shadow Boy. Get back in the freakin' story if you're so damn eager."**

"_**YOU don't give me orders."**_

"**Yeah, sweetie, I kinda do."**

"… _**I will**__**kill you in your sleep."**_

"**I will write you wearing a sombrero and a tutu."**

"… _**Touché." **_

**Vermin**

"St-st-stay b-b-b-back! D-don't come any c-c-clos-er!" Julian grinned widely as he watched the runt whimper and shake, swiping jerkily at things that weren't there. He made one of the rats leap at the quivering boy and his scream was like music. Unable to hide it in any longer, Julian's rich laugh bounded through the room, weaving in a twisted harmony with Tom's keening wails.

Tom was long past the point of begging and pleading for his life, as the knowledge that Julian really didn't care seemed to have penetrated even his thick skull. Julian missed that part. It had been incredibly funny to watch.

Tom aimed a frantic kick at a mangy rat the size of a Yorkshire terrier and even as it was flung away, two more moved in to take its place. The swarmed all over him, scuttling up his pant leg and scratching at his skin. They darted away when Tom swatted clumsily at them, chittering and clicking as though they were laughing at him. Tom was sobbing slightly, his limbs a blur as he tried to shake the rodents off of himself, gulping in air in a way reminiscent to hyperventilation.

Not for the first time, Julian wished he had a camera to capture the moment.

"Did you know," Julian called over the gruesome symphony of squeaks and sobs "that if you see one rat, then it usually means that there are a hundred more nearby?"

Tom's wide eyes flickered up in time to see Julian's smirk and flashing cobalt eyes.

And then the walls caved in.

Brick splintered and there was the suffocating smell of filth and sweaty little bodies, along with deafening chatters and scratching of thousands of claws as a wave of rats spewed through the ever growing cracks and holes. There seemed to be no end to them as they fell over each other, scratching and biting and shrieking all the way. They fought amongst themselves about who was going to get to Tom first, mixing spurts of crimson blood into the squirming mass as they rushed forwards in a never ending stream.

Tom whipped this way and that, desperately pleading for an escape, the thudding of his pulse almost drowning out the awful racket around him. It was no good, they were boxing him in, and the space was getting smaller and smaller every second. Images of what they would do to him assaulted his mind, he saw them slicing his flesh with their needle point claws, tearing through muscle and sinew with their vicious teeth, burrowing inside of him, lapping up his blood ravenously while their beady little eyes laughed.

And Tom _screamed_.

The tsunami of rats was almost upon him and he ducked into a foetal position to try and protect himself, though he knew he was done for. This was the end. Still he screamed bloody murder as the swarm blotted out the light. He could feel their rancid breath on his back, their nails scathing his skin. This was _defiantly_ the end.

Julian watched gleefully, head canted to one side and a smile on his face. The runt was in the middle of an empty room, curled up in a ball and screaming at nothing. It was hilarious.

If nothing else, Julian had to admit the boy had a good imagination. In his minds eye, he saw what Tom thought he was seeing with the help of his own… special talents. The rats heaved onto him as a writhing whole and Tom thrashed and screamed some more. Once more, Julian wished for a camera. And popcorn (at least humans created _something_ worth while).

As amusing as this little show was, the runts constant shrieking was beginning to grate on Julian's already frayed nerves. With a roll of his eyes and a snap of his fingers, the horde of vermin were no more. All left but one, who remained shivering and yelling for a full thirty seconds after the rats had disappeared.

Julian cleared his throat, and the screams stuttered to a stop. The runt looked up slowly, glancing around and shaking and just generally looking terrified. Julian gave himself a mental pat on the back.

Eventually, his wild eyes found Julian, leaning casually against a countertop, and he reluctantly straightened out of his hunched crouch. Through loud pants he hissed "You bastard."

Julian smiled at him. "Of course."

"I'm going to kill you!" Tom's growl was considerably less effective due to the quaking off his limbs and the tears still in his eyes.

Julian couldn't help it, he laughed. "I would _love _to see you try, _Tommy_," he chuckled "I would _love_ to see you try."

When he had gotten his breathing somewhat under control, Tom scrambled to his feet and lunged at the still laughing Julian, yelling a war cry as he came.

Julian watched the pathetic excuse for an attack as though it was happening in slow motion. He quirked a pale eyebrow at the vengeance twisted expression on Tom's face and wondered, for the _billionth time_, what Jenny could possibly see in him. He stood casually and unmoving as Tom charged forwards, waiting until he was close enough for him to shoot out an arm and flip him swiftly onto his back, slamming him to the ground harshly.

Looking down on the runts groaning form, Julian threw in a yawn just for kicks. Tom sent him what he probably thought was a glare.

Julian chuckled again, and something ugly sparked in Toms eyes. Though he was winded, he forced himself to speak. "This is all about Jenny, huh?"

The chuckles cut off abruptly, all traces of humour gone from Julian's system. He clicked his teeth and sent a look with the fury of a thousand ice blizzards burning into Tom's face.

Tom gulped, but carried on regardless. "A-all this just for her?" Julian wondered what he meant by 'just for'. "You shouldn't bother with it. B-because no matter what you do, no matter what you say, Jenny is _my_ girlfriend." Julian didn't know what was on his face, but it made the runt grin. "She's _mine_. And you've gotta realise that she's never, _never _in a million years going to love you." He spat.

Julian made sure his face was the cold mask it usually was, but said nothing. Once again, he found himself thinking of how much he detested emotions.

For a few minuets, silence was absolute. Julian's icy gaze stared unflinchingly down at the runt, who had to avert his eyes and visibly restrain himself from wincing from the force of it.

Tom was cursing himself for saying such a stupid thing. He knew what Julian was capable of, and he was thinking of the many different ways Julian was probably about to torture and torment him in revenge for that little speech.

Behind the mask, Julian was trying to restrain himself from doing all those things and more. The game wouldn't be as fun without all the pawns, now would it?

As time ticked by, Tom was gathering false courage. "Really, man, there's no point. Its- its never gonna work, okay? So, j-just let me go." The part of Julian's mind that was still capable of higher level though marvelled at how the runt could actually be thicker than he looked. However, most of Julian's mind was past caring. He tried, he really did, but he simply couldn't stop himself.

He. Just. _Snapped_.

In a blur of movement, Julian had hauled Tom to his feet and slammed him violently against the wall, a pale hand grasped around his throat. Tom kicked his feet (which, as it happens, were a foot off the ground) and pulled feebly at the iron choke hold. The grip was like steel, and didn't move an inch.

"You shut your mouth." Julian hissed in his ear, feeling a little better when he felt the petrified shaking begin again. "Tell me_, Tommy_, because I'm honestly quit curious; what do you think the chances are that I would just let you leave, just because you asked? _Hm?"_ Tom's eyes were wide and terrified at Julian's inhuman tone, and when he opened his mouth all that came out was a sad little whimper-grunt-thing. "Now _really_, was that a scenario that seemed even remotely logical in your tiny little mind? Is it actually _possible_ that I over estimated your brain efficiency, because before now I would have thought that implausible. Listen, and listen well, you pathetic little _vermin_, because I really don't like to repeat myself. If you ever step one hair out of line again, I will rip your heart out of your chest in ten seconds flat and forget you ever existed within the next five. Are we clear?"

Once again, Tom made no sound, but Julian took the interesting shade of purple he was turning as a yes. He released him, a smile ghosting over his lips as he watched him splutter and gasp on the floor. He bit off the end of each word in a clipped, emotionless voice "You don't want to irritate me, boy. I do regrettable things when I'm irritated. Like mass murder."

Tom only managed to cough in a vaguely insulting way.

Julian curled his lip but turned away from the pitiful heap on the floor. "If you want to talk about Jenny, you should have just said so." His tone was casual, cheerful even, like he hadn't had Tom up against the wall, squeezing the life from his body and making death threats just moments before. At the moment, he resembled a frozen lake: the still, passive surface hiding the roaring turmoil of the currents beneath. But ice is a fragile thing, and too much pressure could shatter it so easily.

The Shadow Man grinned deviously and, with a wave of his hand, the shadows darted forwards, spinning into a man-sized inky black tornado. Tom shielded his eyes from the wind, and when the shadows dissipated Julian was holding a large mirror. The edges were ornately carved into howling skulls and watching eyes, the pictures seeming to shift if you looked away. Its unblemished surface was smooth and perfect, but radiated malice.

"Lets see how she's getting on, hm?" His tone was that of someone inquiring of the weather.

Tom stared at the mirror in confusion, and Julian could tell he was wondering just how unhinged Julian really was. Just then, the surface of the mirror rippled strangely, and when they cleared Jenny's face filled it.

Tom gaped. Julian grinned, leaning over to get a better view.

He manipulated the frame to zoom out to see her surroundings. She looked tired, run down, but, in Julian's opinion, it hardly affected her beauty. He was pleased by it, in fact, it meant she might surrender sooner. Julian chuckled at the thought. _Not likely. She's far too stubborn. A will of iron, that girl._ And that, he figured, was part of why he loved her.

She was in a replica of the petit-blonde girl's bedroom, picking her way through rubbish. All the occupants in the room wore matching expressions of distaste as they worked to clean up. _ Oh, just you wait,_ Julian thought, eyes glinting, _the fun hasn't even started yet._

They watched, Tom disgusted, Julian anticipating, both transfixed, as the piles of trash got more and more nauseating. Then the bugs flooded in.

The scene was now something from a horror movie as giant insects swarmed them, and walls came crashing down.

"Jenny!" Julian frowned at Tom for breaking his silence. The runt grabbed at the mirror stupidly, his hands glancing of the glass pane. Julian rolled his eyes, conjuring shackles that wound their way up his body, restraining him non-too-loosely. Tom thrashed against his bonds in vain, mewling annoyingly. Duct tape slapped itself to his mouth, and Julian couldn't help but think of what an improvement it was.

Back in the mirror, Julian did what Julian did best.

He watched.

He watched Jenny through the haze of panic and screams in the room. By the way Tom was struggling and wincing, he knew that he was worried for her and hated to see her like this. Julian thought it was beautiful. The way her hair splayed out behind her when she ran and dodged, the steely glint of determination in the face of danger, her composure even though she was so scared. She was so pretty when she was scared.

Julian frowned slightly when Jenny skidded to a stop near the escape, shouting at the little blonde child. Because, Julian knew, that was the kind of person she was. Never leaving a friend behind, completely selfless, brave, good. _Good._ Julian exhaled quietly._ Yes, Jenny is far too good for her own good._

Julian took a second he didn't really need to deliberate, before dropping the mirror. It flicked out of existence before it even hit the ground. Tom yelped around the duct tape, yelling in muffled nonsense. Julian ripped the tape from his mouth vindictively, enjoying the wince he got out of it. "That's all, folks."

"YOU _BASTARD_!" Tom shouted.

"You've said that already."

"BRING HER BACK! LET ME _GO_! LET ME GO _RIGHT NOW!"_

He stepped back a few paces before wiggling his fingers at Tom in a mocking wave. The runt screamed in pure fury, straining against his chains.

"Play nice while I'm gone." He whistled, and huge brown rats crept from every shadow in the room, advancing on Tom with their whiskers twitching and pulling back over their too-big teeth in, rat like grins.

"Nononononono…" Tom pressed back into the wall, looking like he wanted to meld with it and never come out. His petrified, wide eyes gaze darted from rat to rat, swaet already pooling all over him. "_Please,_ no!"

The rats picked up their pace, and, as Julian teleported in a breeze of darkness, the runts screams were just beginning.

**Um. Ta da…**

**I know what your going to do. Because your pissed with me, you're gonna withhold reviews. Now I don't blame you, but it means if you don't review, you're simply being spiteful.**

**Do you want to be spiteful?**

**Oh, and this idea was all Child Of The Ashes'. If you liked it, blame her. If you didn't, blame me. It was a BRILLIANT idea, but I may have effed it up. Which I have a startling tendency to do. Its really quite suckish.**

**If I take so pathetically long to update later, assume Julian has made good on his threat to kill me. Then I won't feel bad. (;**

"_**Hn."**_

"**Don't start. My poltergeist will so write you as a Mexican ballerina."**

"_**Oh, I am so very scared. Shake, shake, quiver."**_

"**So you should be, my cooperatively challenged friend, so you should be."**

"_**Bitch.**_**"**

"**Jerk." **


	5. and trips and dress up games

"_**Why? Just… Why? Why must you encourage her? She keep's getting reviews, and every time one is posted, she punches the air and does her sad little victory dance, and then she's grinning like the moron she is for an hour afterwards. It's disturbing. And another thing-"**_

"**The hell are you doing, Julian?"**

"_**I'm talking sense into our minions."**_

"**MY minions, Shadow Boy. MINE. You have your own damn cult of fan-girls to boost your ego on."**

"… _**I'm the only reason they read your strange ramblings."**_

"**I'm aware of this. And I don't blame them." *Props head on hands and sighs dreamily***

"… _**I have a place to be that's not here."**_

"**Aw! Julie, you're so adorable when you're terrified!" *Ruffles his hair (his perfect, perfect hair)***

_***Bats her hand away with a freaked-out expression* "You know I was thinking-" *Breaks off mid-sentence and bolts for the door***_

***Watches him go, smiling* **

**Well, that takes care of that then. Teach him to mess with my computer, hmph! Now, I've had this requested off me so many times I mumble it in my sleep. I don't know if you remember it (it's ENTIRELY unimportant), but it's a little scene in a garage where Julian is dressed as Zach and he and Jenny happen to… Kiss? Oh, so you DO know what I'm talking about. That settles that then. Well, minions, you enjoy this and I'll be back later. *Twirls a Julian-sized net around her hand* I have a Shadow Man to catch.**

"**Heeeeeere, Julie, Julie, Julie…"**

**Playing Dress Up**

Julian stared.

Zach's face stared back at him.

He narrowed his eyes, and Zach's own grey eyes moved to copy him.

He leaned back. So did Zach.

In a moment of childishness, Julian stuck his tongue out at the reflective surface of the water below him, grinning when Zach's image did the same.

He didn't mind Zach's looks, didn't mind his cool grey eyes, didn't even mind his abnormally long hair.

But, _ugh_, his _clothes!_ White washed jeans, generic 'sneakers' and a plaid flannel shirt? Plaid? _Honestly?_ Julian shuddered, feeling common just touching them. Not a trace of leather, spikes or even black to be found.

Julian scowled dangerously close to the way a spoiled teenager might scowl. _But it's for Jenny_, he reminded himself. Yes, for Jenny he would wear the damn Plaid.

He moved away from the photo equipment, going over what needed to be done in his head. He needed to act like Zach, which was easy enough considering he'd been inside his head for more than half of his life, but what's more he needed to act _human_.

_Excuse me while I vomit,_ he thought snidely.

And how would a human react to his little games? Keeping his modesty in check, he summarised that any human in that unfortunate situation would be traumatized, or, at the very least, in shock.

Julian knew all this. He was playing yet another role, he knew his character, he knew his lines, he knew his motivation, and now he was just waiting on his queue. The trap itself was insultingly simple but, because he knew her so well, Julian was sure that an ominous open door would be enough to get Jenny's natural curiosity itching to walk through it. A little bit of a mystical influencing haze on the mind didn't hurt, of course, but it was mostly just the door.

He was getting far too good at waiting. He willed the time away, thinking, musing, plotting…

After a while, Julian cocked his head to one side as, sure enough, he heard Jenny step through the exact replica of her cousins art garage. When she paused, Julian took the opportunity to busy himself with developing some fake photographs, as though he hadn't seen sensed her coming. He heard her light footsteps behind him, but didn't turn.

"Zach!" She called happily, running towards the image of her cousin. It felt odd, having Jenny run _towards_ him instead of having her runaway from him. "Zach, it's me, Jenny. Zach – what are you _doing?_"

Julian didn't answer her, still mulling over the feeling he couldn't place. Methodically, he kept on stirring the liquid in the tray he held in Zach's rough hands. He made sure his face was a perfect resemblance to a human who had locked-down in shock from fear. He had, after all, seen it often enough.

"Oh, Zach, what's wrong with you?" When Jenny threw her arms around him, _voluntarily_, Julian didn't have to 'act' in shock at all. His body froze entirely of its own accord and his mind ceased all thought for a few dizzying seconds. It was hard for him to keep up the pretence, to push her away and fake unaffected before it looked suspicious.

Jenny swallowed, concerned. "Zachary, did Dee come in here? Have you seen Audrey or Michael?"

Ever plotting, he was tempted to lie while she trusted him, send her on a wild goose chase. He was sure he could play that to his advantage somehow… In the end he decided against it. He'd been looking forwards to this far too much to sabotage himself now. "I haven't seen anyone." He said in how he knew Zach would speak. "I was sitting out there. Where the mirrors are. Then I saw a flashgun go off. When I looked for it, I found a door. I pushed the button and went in."

Understanding dawned in Jenny's luminous eyes. "But what are you _doing_?" She asked again.

"It was all set up for me. The print was already in the developer." He lied. When he saw Jenny's hand reaching towards him, instead of fighting off what he knew her touch would do, he made a bell ding as an easy excuse. "I have to rinse it now."

He flipped the light on, watching Jenny blink against the harsh light that had no effect on him whatsoever. With the exact measure of skill Zach would have used, Julian fiddled with the sopping paper, stepping back to examine it with an unsatisfied air about him, the way Zach had a tendency to do.

When Jenny spoke this time, her voice was sharper. "Zach, _please_. You have to listen. Don't you realize this is your nightmare? We can't waste time – we have to find a door to get out. _Zach!_"

This time, when she reached for him, Julian shoved her away before she could really brush him, forcing himself to do it clumsily and human.

But, as always, he quickly got bored of keeping distance between Jenny and himself.

"I have to finish this job. I have to…" In a slightly more theatrical movement than most of his other theatrical movements, Julian's legs buckled from under him.

Just like he knew she would, Jenny lunged forwards to catch him before he hit the ground. And then his arms were around her, pressing her against him so tight that he was a little worried he was crushing her. But then she was holding onto him and she felt _warm _and it felt _right_, even though there was no logical way it ever could be. Against her neck, Julian mumbled something he didn't hear.

She squeezed him reassuringly. "It's okay. That's what cousins are for."

_Cousins._

Such an innocent little word, such a flooring context to it. Because Jenny wasn't holding him, she was holding her _cousin_. If she knew this was Julian, she'd never be doing this.

Frowning, Julian tried to pull back, put some space between them so he could sort out his thoughts (so he could stomp down his feelings with dreams of screaming and blood before attempting to forget he'd ever had them in the first place). But Jenny wouldn't let him, and yanked Julian- yanked _Zach_, back down. Julian knew he could break the hold easily, Jenny, for everything about her that protested otherwise, was only human and Julian, by design, was much stronger than she was.

But, as she buried her face in his shoulder and he could feel her hair on his face, he thought, _To hell with it_, and stopped even trying. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her small form, smiling over the fact that, however clichéd it may have been (which was a lot), they did in fact fit together like estranged puzzle pieces. He breathed her in; Pine, honey, sunlight and something else that was just entirely _Jenny_. If this was what it got him, he didn't think he'd mind wearing Plaid every day for the rest of his very long life.

Unable to resist, he eavesdropped on her thoughts. She was, of course, thinking of Zach. Of when they both were children.

Julian sighed imperceptibly. Well, he supposed that if that was what Jenny wanted, then that was what he'd give her. "Just like when we were kids." He chuckled. _Zachary Thornton Clone #1, now available in a nightmare near you,_ Julian thought bitterly.

When Jenny spoke, she sounded happy. "And you'd get all scraped up climbing trees, and we'd wash you with the hose so Aunt Lil wouldn't get mad." When Jenny laughed, it sounded somewhat warped. "Oh, Zach, I'm so glad I found you."

Julian was glad she couldn't see his face. "Me, too. I've been feeling pretty weird."

"I've been so scared," _Result_, "-And now…" She broke off, unable to finish.

He rubbed her back in a gesture of comfort he didn't know he was capable of. "It's okay. We're together now. We'll make things okay."

Jenny didn't answer, just held him even tighter. Julian kept up the soothing gestures, unsure of what he was doing, or of what he should be doing, or anything other than the knowledge that he wanted to calm her, to make her safe even it was _himself_ who was the danger to her in the first place. In that moment, that fact completely slipped his mind. It didn't matter in the least. Not then.

He smiled when he felt her relax. She leaned against him peacefully, and he happily supported both their weights.

Not really even thinking about it, Julian leaned in to kiss her neck.

An electric shock jolted through him, like a bolt of lightening had shot from her skin to his. But much, much more pleasant. Jenny didn't wrench away from him, she didn't even reach up to slap him. She seemed content, pleased even. Testing, Julian placed another soft kiss in the same place. She didn't move to stop him. Smiling against her skin, Julian kept going.

Then he felt her stirring, and she pushed at his arms gently, pulling away from him. Julian had to consciously stop himself from pulling her back or shouting out in protest. "Zach, I think we're both – a little upset. We're not ourselves." She spoke in whispers and Julian sub-consciously mimicked her tone.

"I know." He managed, still slightly dazed. "I'm sorry" He really wasn't, "I-" He started to speak, but then the lights caught Jenny's hair in the most _fascinating_ way, and he was kissing it before he knew what was happening.

"_Zachary_. It's _wrong._ We're cousins." He could practically feel the internal war in her pretty little head.

Julian muttered something as a reflex, for the first time wishing Jenny would stop talking so she wouldn't spoil it. He knew she was going to pull away soon anyway, so his kisses were becoming more urgent, trying to get in as many as possible before he had to be dragged out of the surreal world he was currently floating in. Between kisses, he found himself repeating the words "I can't help it," over and over again, sounding oddly apologetic. Which, as it's Julian we're talking about here, was _absurd_. But for once, he was telling the honest truth. Gods only knew how much he wished he could switch the damn feelings _off_ but he _just couldn't help it._

"But, Tom…" Her body seemed to seize up and Julian, a reflex whenever he heard that _vermin's_ name, pulled Jenny tighter to him.

Julian spoke directly into her ear, pleading (or as close as he could get) for her to just _listen_ and understand. "He doesn't deserve you. He doesn't love you enough." He tried to calm himself down and speak how Zachary would. "I was always afraid to say it, but you know it's true."

Julian heard her lips part as though she was going to say something, but she couldn't seem to find the words, so he went on, his tone reasonable and calm. He hoped she wouldn't be able to detect the current of emotion (damn the thing) shivering underneath the words "And now I know you don't love him enough, either. You weren't meant to be with him." He had always known this, of course, but to have solid proof, to have Jenny willingly in his arms (or at least Zachary's), for it to be _him _and not that little weasel making her feel this way, was… _exhilarating_.

He pulled back slightly to look at her, staring wilfully into those almond, intense green eyes and getting so lost in them (if you'll kindly excuse the cliché), he almost lost control of the shapeshifting trick. "You can't fight something like Jenny." His voice was an almost exasperated whisper. "You know you can't."

For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, they looked at each other. Julian felt her warm breath on his lips, and the universe seemed to fall into a hush, stalling to watch like an audience on the edge of its seat, holding its breath just as Julian was.

And then Jenny turned her head up.

And then Julian kissed her for the very first time.

And then he lost all coherent thought.

All he was aware of, all he wanted to be aware of, was Jenny's (his Jenny's) lips on his. They were soft as velvet, moulding to fit around his own. Her mouth was sinfully warm and tasted faintly of peaches. Julian lost himself in the moment, escaping the world and all its petty problems. As they kissed, he wasn't a Shadow Man anymore, and she wasn't human. He wasn't the Hunter, and she wasn't the Prey. They were just… themselves. Just Jenny and Julian.

He didn't know exactly how long they stood like that, but when Jenny pulled back, Julian was, as teens these days would say, _blissed out_ enough to let her. He could feel the beginnings of a smile (not a smirk, a _smile_) playing around his lips as he looked down at her through half lidded eyes. He was about to ask her what was wrong but, for a reason unfathomable to Julian in his buzzing state, she scrubbed her mouth with her hand as though she had tasted something awful, and glared at him with full on _resentment_.

It was the glare that woke Julian from his daze as though a bucket of ice water had been dunked over the head of a sleep walker. _She wasn't kissing you, Julian, she was kissing_ Zach, a hard voice hissed,_ Of course she hates you again_.

Which was a good thing, he reminded himself. That's how it was meant to be. That's how it worked.

His dreamy expression was mercilessly killed, like a light switch being shut off and plunging a previously cosy room into cold darkness. He kept his face as blank as a slate, giving nothing of his inner reactions away.

What in _Hell_ had he been thinking? He'd left his guard down and lost control of the situation, all for a single _kiss_? Shadow Men didn't kiss, for God's sake! Kissing was a foolish, pointless human tradition that meant nothing. A complete waste of time, and it meant _nothing_.

The tingling on his lips said otherwise.

Jenny's hoarse, but somehow still musical voice cut through his traitorous thoughts. "How could you know…? You acted like Zach – you knew things only he would know-"

"I've watched him, I've watched you. I'm the Shadow man, Jenny – and I love you." _To Hell with it_, he thought. He was screwed anyway, and any echo of his treasured signature cold personality was doomed. He'd have to be extra bad **(Ew, you sick minded perves! Leave it.)** to get his reputation back. That, at least, would be fun.

The hate, or as close as innocent little Jenny could manage, in her green, green eyes seemed to spark as though gasoline had just been thrown onto the flame. Her form seemed to flare up with fire, and Julian fancied he could hear her ever present light crackle with burning energy. It was _adorable._

She turned on her heel and left.

He, as always, followed her.

Julian didn't need his abilities to know she was thinking about that small blonde girl.

He sighed, taking on a teacher-to-student tone, "She agreed. Just like all the rest of you, she agreed to play the Game."

"She didn't know it was real!" She yelled, like a kitten who thought it was a tiger.

"I acknowledge that the game is real…"

"You can talk all you want, Julian – but you killed her."

_Ah._ And therein, lay the crux of the matter. "_I _didn't do anything to her. Her own fear did that. She couldn't face her nightmare." Well, what was he supposed to say? _'Oh, don't worry about that, I swept in and saved her because I couldn't bear for you to actually hate me forever.'_ Which, before you say anything, _was not_ true. He kept her so he could use her for his own selfish reasons against Jenny. That was it.

All this lying to himself just couldn't be healthy. But, then again, neither was kidnap or murder, so it was a moot point.

"It wasn't fair." said Jenny in a low, serious voice.

_Fair?_ There was no _fair_, there was no _justice_, there were simply the hunters and the hunted. But of course ever-innocent Jenny Thornton would deny the evils of the world to her death bed. He shook his head, amused. Silly girl. "Life isn't fair, Jenny. Haven't you learned that yet?" He still had time to teach her…

"What gives you the _right _to play with us this way? How can you _justify_ it?" She ranted.

Julian had to physically restrain himself from snorting. "I don't need the right. Listen to me, Jenny. The worlds – all nine of them – are cruel. They don't care anything about you, or about right." He spat the word as though it was a curse. "There is no ultimate goodness. It's the law of the jungle. You don't need right – if you have strength."

"I don't believe you." She said simply, stubborn as usual.

"That the world is cruel?" Even she couldn't be that blind. He picked up a strategically placed newspaper from a nearby bench. The front page headline bore the latest terrorist attack and the death toll in bold black lettering that seemed to jump from the page, eager to be the first to share the morbid news. For some it was a tragedy, for others something to tut at, for a few it was a pay cheque. That was how the world _worked_. "Take a look at this and tell me that evil loses and good wins. Tell me that it's not the law of the jungle in your world."

She averted her eyes before she could even take in the images of devastation and hysterical families, and something almost slightly possibly akin to defeat flickered in her eyes.

Julian flashed one of his most disturbing smiles. "Reality has teeth and claws." He explained dutifully. "And since that's true, wouldn't you rather be one of the hunters than one of the hunted?"

No hesitation, Jenny shook her head. She still didn't meet his eyes, and Julian was so frustrated with her he barely registered the way the movement made her blonde locks sway like molten gold.

When he spoke, his voice was no longer teasing, but hard and clipped. "I'm offering you a choice. I told you before that if I couldn't persuade you I would force you – somehow." A hundred scenarios flicked through Julian's head, his mind so used to plotting that it did it on auto-pilot. "If you won't agree I'll have to show you what I mean. I'm tired of playing, Jenny. I want this settled – one way or another."

Her head came up and she stared him dead in the eye and said "It is settled. I'll never come to you. I _hate _you."

Julian felt the simmering anger flare at her words which he was hearing far, far too often. It was in the nature of a Shadow Man, the want to be feared and hated, and Julian had revelled in it for longer than he cared to admit, but the words he had heard a thousand times from a thousand different mouths, the word he had laughed at, seemed to sting like a whip coming from this single human girl. His voice was rough and irritated, just a scratch of the emotions beneath "Don't you understand that what happened to Summer can happen to you?"

"Yes," She said simply, but with a steady gaze and sure voice "I do."

And it was clear in her forest green eyes that she honestly _did_ understand. And yet, that foolish, stupid, stubborn, frustratingly beautiful light of hers proved that while she understood, she was still going to fight the up hill battle to deny it. How someone like Jenny could have lived in the world without having her spirit crushed and stomped all over by the laws of the jungle was completely beyond him.

And that firey bright and very much alive spirit was clear in her eyes when she said "You're right. Maybe things are that bad. But that doesn't mean I have to give in. I wont join you willingly, so you might as well try force."

His mouth quirked up in a humourless smirk. "I will."

_Oh, I will_.

It was common knowledge that Jenny was afraid of bees. Anyone who knew her could tell you that whenever she saw on she'd yelp and bolt for the house, refusing to venture back outside until it was definitely gone for good. It was less common knowledge, however, that this fear had stemmed from a horror film she had watched when she was eleven, which was about a huge swarm of bees sweeping over the planet and obliterating, eating and stinging the world into an early apocalypse. Knowledge exclusive to Julian and Jenny herself was that the real reason she watched the movie in the first place was because her parents had said she couldn't. Needless to say, she'd regretted the decision ever since.

The very same swarm of insects was flitting into the room that very moment.

Ever dramatic, Julian started off slowly with just a few bees perching on her arms harmlessly. Jenny froze, and Julian grinned victoriously when her eyes went wide with fright.

"Is there one in my hair?" He grinned wider at the quiver in her voice, but gave no other response.

A flick of his finger and there _was_ a bee in her hair, writhing angrily so it was impossible to miss. Jenny glanced at Julian, realization dawning, and he cocked his head to one side and smiled as the air became heavy with the buzzing wing-beats of a thousand bees. Julian caught the last frantic look she sent him before the bees descended as one, covering her entire body like a moving yellow and black sheet.

He'd seen grown men, warriors of a past time be driven mad by this torture, watched amusedly as they thrashed and screamed and sobbed as they were killed by a thousand tiny stings. As for Jenny, though her small body was shaking from the weight of the swarm, she didn't move, didn't scream, didn't beg. And because of that Julian thought he might have fallen even more in love with her. He knew what everyone else saw when they looked at Jenny, a pretty girl, yes, but delicate as a flower or spun glass. They seemed to miss the core of steel and fire that flared up for Julian. He almost pitied them.

After a few minutes, he smelt the salt from her tears in the air. Something inside of him tugged, and an irritating part of him that seemed to be growing every second was throwing itself at his mental walls and screaming that this wasn't right and that he needed to let Jenny free _rightthisfuckingsecond _or else there'd be some _hell_ to pay. He ignored it as best he could, but gave her an out that would please both of them.

"Just say the word, Jenny."

Her head shifted slightly in a no.

He wondered how someone so smart could act so very, very stupid. She remained standing for a few more moments, but Julian could tell she was wavering as she swayed dizzily. He watched carefully, ready to call off the bees the second she asked him to, sure she would cave any second.

She never did.

Even when she toppled backwards onto a horde of pissed of stinging insects, she didn't ask for his help.

There was a war of immense frustration vs a strange sense of pride in Julian's chest (now his cursed emotions couldn't even control _themselves_, dammit).

When Julian sighed the bees clicked out of existence, and it was just Jenny collapsing unconscious to the ground. His body seemed to move itself as he darted forward to catch her before she made impact, and she ended up laid gently across his lap in the floor of a fake garage. Looking down on Jenny's face, her pretty features relaxed in the sleep of the innocent, Julian shook his head slowly in disbelief, before letting out a breathy chuckle.

_She is the most…_

A dozen different ways to finish the sentence flitted through Julian's mind. _Stubborn? Brave? Infuriating? Unbelievable? Beautiful? Insane?_ None seemed to quite fit.

While he still had the will power to, Julian lifted her from him, laying her softly down on the cold tile floor. He reached down to brush a few golden strands of hair from her face, running the back of his hand over her cheek as a smile ghosted over his face. "Silly girl." He muttered, before leaning in to kiss her forehead.

At least, he stopped a few millimetres short of contact, and he recoiled back and shot to his feet, taking a few hasty steps backwards. What the _hell _had be been about to do? Julian didn't kiss foreheads, he simply _didn't_ do it. That was left to the lovesick saps in the crappy movies Jenny liked to watch. Not. Shadow Men.

Just before he was about to teleport, Julian cast one last look at Jenny's still form. He shook his head again, this time to clear it.

What had this girl done to him?

**Yes, its long. **

**But it's late.**

**And it's sappy.**

**And you've probably died of boredom by now. I'm really sor-**

"_**Mmph!"**_

***Flicks Julian on the ear from her seat on his back.* "Quiet, slave."**

"_**Mm gnph mph mph mu."**_

"**Do speak up." *Rips duct tape from his mouth***

"_**I'm going to kill you."**_

"**That's simply uncalled for."**

"_**You HOGTIED me!"**_

"…**Your point?"**

"_**You're not posting that crap."**_

"**I can't think of anything better!"**

"_**Have you read it, author? You make me sound like a love drunk moron! Oh Gods, you made me Edward fucking Cullen! You bitch!"**_

"**We do not speak his name!"**

"_**You're right. My apologies… You're still not posting that, though." *Grabs for the kepboard***_

***Snatches it back* "Yeah, well how are you planning to stop m fyrfg f dcf ilueflEFU JGILIA h kjdfh kihfg hhrjncvn ;I **

**Ghk gh **

**Th gkgbbbh gkgkjkjj jjjjjjjjj thjjjjjjjjj lgjkh olfg. L. ffghifg jhfgjkhgjkh k ghiou;poi p opifjg io**

"… _**Now look what you did. Oh, and do remember to review, minions, you know she goes nuts for them. It amuses me."**_


	6. and kinds of pain

**oh my fucking god you guys-**

…**guys…?**

**/tosses thin papery update into empty room, where it is picked up disinterestedly by a cold wind baring bygone echoes of a fic long passed and left shivering and alone on the cyber concrete.**

**oh ok**

**well for anyone who stumbles across this, firstly, hello, and secondly wow you remember this? i just found it in my old embarrassing profile and goddamn. goddamn fuck i was annoying when i was thirteen. i didn't think i'd had anything like character development in the last few years but wow nope okay cheers i could and have been worse. and hey look the fic even has a pretty cover on it now uwu**

**i'm gonna rewrite the other chapters. i think. but here's this as a shout through the ages oF YES I LIVE I BREATHE I ATTEMPT TO TAP THESE KEYS IN SOME SEMBELANCE OF ORDER 'ELLO ME HEARTIES GOSh these are pretty characters-**

**here's a thing. quickie. i think i'm stretching. **

…

It said something about him, Julian thought idly, that a sense of such smugness could be evoked from a three-by-two inch white square. A single unmarked playing card, and about as useless as that to anyone – anyone, _including_ the chittering band of morons a few floors up (or was it down from here? To this side? Or the opposite? Both or three? He simply couldn't care for the physics restricting about the outer world. It was so much easier to be nowhere at once, he'd found) – else who might see it.

It was in Jenny's hand.

Julian understood it perfectly and absolutely.

Even more so than her, for now.

He took lazy, unhurried steps, and was almost close enough to nuzzle her glowing hair (which, yes, he had every intention of doing) before she noticed him and tensed. He stopped himself, leaned backwards good-naturedly and, amused, asked, "Need any help?"

The smooth paper was crushed into whispers as Jenny closed her fist tight. She turned, queen with her regal head held high and able soldier with her clenched hands folded behind her spine. Jenny. She was beautiful.

She was talking to him ("So it was you shooting at us."), and she sounded far from surprised.

Julian took it upon himself to act so for her, placing a theatrical hand to his armoured chest in mock scandal before grinning toothily. "Personally," he countered, conspiritual, "I think it was Zach's father. I think he has a little complex there. Rugged, old-fashioned dad; artistic, new-fangled son, you know." He was quite close to materialising himself a Victorian leather philosopher's chair and a tobacco pipe, playing the consorting scholar to her royal image. Later, he promised absently, smiling. And of course there would be many games besides. "On the other hand, I _am _a hunter."

"Why don't you just go away," she ordered, and he imagined that she understood the game and was playing with him, too.

She turned back. "I'm trying to figure something out."

"I'm glad to help," he tried, shaking off the queasy feeling of sincerity. "I know a lot about you. I've watched you for so many years now. Hour after hour, day after day…"

Trailing off, Julian fell into memories. Memories of a sleeping Jenny, of a younger Jenny with late noon sunlight in her spinning hair as she danced around her room shouting gleefully into a hairbrush, of a makeshift tent-duvet illuminated within by a harsh yellow light, cocooning a reading Jenny from the generic nighttime dark, but not from Julian, who was usually reading over her shoulder. A hundred thousand bittersweet and perfect little moments glowing forever (literally, for long as he should live) behind his eyes, like the afterimage flashing of the expensive Polaroid camera her parent's had bought her as a so-sorry-we-missed-your-fourteenth-birthday present.

Memories of the same bottle-green eyes that were before him now, to be sure, but of times they were warmer, or happier, and calmly unguarded in the way people could only ever be when they were with a person in whom they had the upmost trust, or alone entirely. (The latter, he reminded himself with a wave of bitterness. It was _always_alwaysalways the latter).

He only realised that it had been the wrong thing to say when he came back to himself and found her watching him with abject horror.

_No_.

"I'm in love with you." It was simple, true, and the only defence he could think of, having never really needed any kind of one prior to this moment. And then, "I think everything you do is marvellous."

Jenny's ire only rose to meet this. "You-"

He rushed in half-assurances that sounded criminally insular, even to his own weak grasp of this 'proper' way of interaction. "There's no need to be embarrassed. I don't think the same way you do. Whether your hair's brushed – whether your make-up is on – I don't care. Besides, didn't you know I was there?"

"_Of course not."_

The smile left his face as though her violent hiss had physically clawed it away_. No_, he thought. _No, you knew that. You were wishing, you stupid fool, wishing that she knew it was you that she knew you and knew and trusted enough to sleep near to you but she never did she never did and she never w_– For the first time in his unlife, Julian was glad to see Jenny looking right through him. She did not see his thoughts before he swallowed them down like razored nails but this couldn't be pain, he was entirely fine, and this was right, this was his purpose, after all. He was fine. And cool.

_Cold_.

And quietly, "I hate you."

It was not pain.

"I'd have thought you'd want my help right now." He was trying for snide, and ended at blank. Alright. He jerked a motion to the wall. "_That's_ your nightmare, Jenny – but how are you going to get into it? And if you can't get into it," She could need him, he reasoned. One day she could. She would. He could make her need him, and they would be fine. "How are you going to get through it?"

In return to his quiet malice, Jenny only smiled. And in return to that, Julian felt some of the painstakingly crafted new ice chip away with less fight than windowpane frost under the poking of warm hands, and he managed still to _hate it hateitihatethis_–

Jenny smoothed the white sheet in her fingers and said, "I'll get in with this."

Julian couldn't risk her eyes, dropped his gaze and his voice. "But how will you remember? You don't know what to draw. You've spent all these years trying to forget…" _and waking up before the dawn, screaming and sweating and twisting, and I was there with you, Jenny, every time, but did you see me?_

"I know enough," she went on. "I know what it starts with. It starts with my grandfather's basement, when I was five years old." She put the dull little crayon to the unmarred surface of the card, began to draw.

The Shadow Man cocked his head at the girl's working form and didn't smile. He felt, if anything, curiously hollowed out – as if the refusal to feel the niggling doubts in his mind, the way he'd pushed them down had clawed out and crushed his insides down with them. And he – hurt.

He took his omniscient observers' seat.

He was fine. Pain was a good payment for magic, he well knew, even if it had so rarely been his own before now. It could still turn the round to his advantage.

Jenny was finished: waxy grey rectangles and stripes of stairs and book stacks and a table in a miniature pale square of basement.

_And we're off_.

As someone who specialised exclusively in frightening people into madness, in completely and past repair breaking the minds, souls and, when the mood struck him, bodies of mortals, and having subsequently been rather brilliant at it for quite some time – Julian was no soft touch for tears.

Of course, as Jenny had rediscovered her memories and her nightmare, Julian hadn't just_ left_ her there – had had a good time reminiscing about a good day, in fact – and now…

Jenny – she was not, _not_ completely broken. Not her, by any means.

But…

Humans were ridiculous, infantile creatures. In distress, they had developed the amusingly unhelpful habit of excreting salt water from their eyes for reasons unfathomable to the imagination or even science. On any, _any_, other person, it was funny.

But any other person it is not.

It's Jenny.

_Jenny,_ she of the sunlight and forests, _his_ Jenny, is crying her little heart out on an empty floor- and he has put her there. And this is not at any stretch okay. He _cannot have_ it.

He had not lied before – he knows her. Knows her a thousand times well enough to know that when she was upset – but she'd never been this, by God, _never _this, with these great gasps that only choked and came out low keening, his Jenny _jennypleaseohjenny_ – all she wanted was to be alone. But he cannot do_ that_ – couldn't do that now any more than he could have a year ago, or before – less of a chance to leave today than there was yesterday. As it always had been, and would always, always be.

So Julian sits. His hand, incorporeal and colourless and maybe, maybe shaking, hovers just a centimetre above her arched back, and Julian doesn't leave her, and Julian doesn't touch her, either, because he can just about manage that part. Julian hates, silently and encompassingly but directionless, and he waits with her, waits for people to come and to find and be _allowed_ to touch her and _able_ to help her back.

Somewhere there's a strange realisation that, wearing as she is, she's his Jenny, and she has won. And they are winning. And they – _she _– could leave him yet.

_And he cannot have that._

And when they do come, and do help – Julian also finds he cannot hate them well enough.

…

**just give her a hug omg you fucking douchecake Julian jesus**

**no you're right i'm 403% sure she'd suckerpunch your pretty head off **

**how much would you guys pay to see that**

**wow.**

**Okay like i said this is a test run i'm just throwing it out there to see if anything catches it or it just flutters burning briefly to the cold hard ground idefk. i'm gonna go write the other chapters now because they hurt me a little.**

**50/1 the same will be said for this chapter in like a month. peh. ok. i'll see you when i see you. i love you. yeah.**

(hey in the time between can i hold you off by recommending that you watch and/or read _**Warm Bodies**_ (by Jason Isaacs) because oh man it's fucking adorable. the book's a lot different in that it's a lot more soul-search-y and so masterfully written with such pretty words and the movie is lively and funny and they did so well and wow. wow so worth the spending i promise you. like you go in half-expecting it to be one of those, _"Aha, still a better love story that Twilight lol amiright ami hahahaah lol necro ahdjlk hfuk_," and then you come out of the theatre/reading haze like, "_Oh._")

**Reviews massively appreciated – I'd like to know if there's a, you know. A point? Or, like, if I did okay by you here. **

**?**


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